


Know that I love you so

by Anonymous



Series: Toonkind D&D Fics [9]
Category: The First Drafthouse (Toonkind D&D)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Angst, Character Death, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, Short A Hat FPS Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:49:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27242968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: (There is a ghost in the studio. It lurks in the corners of swollen red eyes, in the gaps between clenched fists, in photographs made all the more precious. They’re alive, but you’re dead.)(There’s a ghost in the studio. You flicker at the corners of their vision like a faded film projection. Your voice is the whisper of static over a broken connection. You watch people cry over you. You’re dead, but they’re alive.)(Or, the AU where Jack dies in Short A Hat, but he doesn't disappear.)
Relationships: Lucky Jack (Toonkind D&D) & Everyone
Series: Toonkind D&D Fics [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1989043
Kudos: 5
Collections: Anonymous





	Know that I love you so

**Snippet 1: There's a ghost in the studio**

Don’t think about the aftermath. Don’t think about the grief and the mourning.

(you were loved, and you know this now, when it’s too late to do anything about it. When you straddle the line between living and not. Your fingers leave translucent blood on the walls.)

(There is a ghost in the studio. It lurks in the corners of swollen red eyes, in the gaps between clenched fists, in photographs made all the more precious. They’re alive, but you’re dead.)

(There’s a ghost in the studio. You flicker at the corners of their vision like a faded film projection. Your voice is the whisper of static over a broken connection. You watch people cry over you. You’re dead, but they’re alive.)

* * *

**Snippet 2: Discovery**

You’re there when the Engineer finds out what happened.

(You’ve never seen him so angry before, but above all- when the smoke clears and the studio is swept clean of ashes and blood- you’ve never seen them so _crushed_. The brilliant gold of their feathers overtaken by a dull muddy gray. The warmth that he radiates leeched out by the chill of a death committed.)

(You’re taller than he is, but you look tiny like that, curled up with your hands folded over your chest, Shorts Kid’s fingers digging into the fabric of your bloodied shirt- you look small in The Engineer’s arms, your ears hanging limply and brushing against the floor.)

* * *

**Snippet 3: Too little, too late**

Your room is just the way you left it- your cane leaning against the dresser, bed unmade-indentations in the sheets where you once were and aren’t anymore.

There are crumpled pieces of paper strewn about on the floor, kicked under your bed. Your pen is bleeding ink, soaking into the carpet (like blood, like tears, and your own translucent crimson joins it when you stand over it) and you know what those papers say.

You’d told yourself this morning that you’d finish writing that letter tomorrow. You’ve been telling yourself this for months. You thought you’d have the chance to put it off for months to come.

(A torn scrap of paper that didn’t quite make it under your bed: **I’m sorry** , it reads. You are.)

* * *

**Snippet 4: You never thought grief could be so loud**

Do you know what people do when their loved ones are gone?

(You do now.)

They live. They try to move on. 

(But you don’t just disappear. You’re a gaping wound in the studio, the feeling that _something’s missing_ \- a lost step, an empty chair at the table.)

(Shorts Kid is not the only one who you made cry. Mersel sets out one plate extra, muscle memory guiding his hands, and you have to look away when the devastation crosses his face. Tobias visits your grave every weekend, and he spends the next few weeks a deep shade of blue. March is quiet. You can read their thoughts in the tense lines of their shoulders though: _it should have been me_.)

The world turns, life keeps going, and you don’t go with it. You’re a shadow on the wall now. The occasional red pair of eyes in the dark.

(Shorts Kid wears a coat that’s too big for their body, too many empty spaces for mistakes and grief to make themselves at home.)

* * *

**Snippet 5: You're the one who's supposed to be making stupid decisions**

Shorts Kid doesn’t make it to Dora.

(The Engineer is thankful, so thankful, that he managed to stop them before they could leave. He doesn’t even think to question the door of his bedroom slamming open, or that deep intense feeling of alarm, _no no no, save them, SAVE THEM-_ )

(It’s similar to the nightmares he’s been having since the incident in a way, except this time, he catches his child before they could get into danger. He could almost swear he feels a second set of arms encircling them, the whisper of _that’s one hug, kid._ )

“S-She can bring him back, right?” They say, and he rocks them back and forth in his arms, smoke dripping from his mouth like tears. His heart feels like it’s stopped beating, a stone in his chest. He thinks of Vic. He does not (he cannot, not now, maybe not ever) think of Jack.

“I want him back I don’t want him to be dead-“ They sob into his chest hard enough for it to be a scream, and he holds them through it, carries the weight of their grief alongside his own like a child. It’s not okay. But he lets them cry.

(You hug Shorts Kid and shuts your eyes. _Two hugs._ You murmur, as you rest your chin on the top of their head.)

**Author's Note:**

> *sweats* IM NOT SORRY


End file.
